Correlation between coronary artery calcification and COVID-19

TL;DR

This study found that coronary artery calcification is linked to higher in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients, but not to disease severity.

Contribution

The study identifies new correlations between coronary artery calcification and clinical outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Findings

CAC is significantly associated with in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients.

CAC correlates with clinical parameters like age, hospitalization duration, and blood markers.

CAC does not predict the severity index of COVID-19 or reliably predict mortality via logistic regression.

Abstract

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is an underlying cardiac condition contributing to increased COVID-19 mortality and morbidity which can be assessed by several diagnosis methods including coronary artery calcification (CAC). The goal of this study was to find out if there were potential links between CAC, clinical findings, severity of COVID-19, and in-hospital outcomes.

This retrospective study evaluated 551 suspected patients admitted to teaching hospitals of the Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran, from March to October 2021. Data included previous diseases, comorbidities, clinical examinations, routine laboratory tests, demographic characteristics, duration of hospitalization, and number of days under ventilation were recorded in a checklist.

Findings of current study provide evidence of a significant relationship between coronary artery calcification (CAC) and in-hospital mortality. Additionally, we observed significant correlations between CAC and several clinical parameters including age, duration of hospitalization, pulse rate, maximum blood pressure, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), neutrophil count, white blood cell (WBC) count, and oxygen saturation. However, we did not observe a significant association between CAC and the severity index of COVID-19. In addition, logistic regression tests did not find a significant value of CAC to predict in-hospital mortality.

Our findings showed a significant relationship between CAC and in-hospital mortality.